1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image processing device, an image forming device, an image processing method, an image forming method, a program, and a computer readable recording medium on which the program is recorded. In particular, the invention relates to an image processing device, an image forming device, an image processing method, an image forming method, a program, and a computer readable recording medium on which the program is recorded, for transmitting and printing a document file, which includes objects that can be arranged in the file in an order different from the order of pages as well as reference information that indicates the locations of the objects within the file, and which defines pages having a specified object, from the image processing device to the image forming device without converting the document file into print data.
2. Description of the Related Art
A personal computer (“PC”) is capable of transmitting a document file stored in, for example, a hard disk to a printer via a network such as LAN.
In this case, the document file is transmitted after being converted into print data described in a printer-recognizable PDL (Page Description Language) such as PS (PostScript®) by means of a printer driver typically installed in the PC.
On the other hand, PDF (Portable Document Format) files are widely used being distributed over the Internet as a type of document file that can be reproduced in the same format as the original document regardless of the types of hardware or application. The PDF file has objects that can be arranged in a file in an order different from the order of pages and reference information that indicates the locations of the objects in the file, and defines a page consisting of specified objects.
In the meanwhile, a PDF file may contain several hundreds of pages of data. When such a large PDF file is converted into print data by a PC, the load on the PC can be enormous due to the reason that it takes a long time to convert, requires a complicated process, it takes a long time to transmit the data as the data size increases as a result of the conversion, etc. In order to reduce the PC's load, printers that are capable of directly printing a PDF file transmitted directly from a PC without the conversion (“PDF direct printing”) have been proposed.
However, although a printer can print from the top page of the print data received in case of print data that are described in PDL such as PS as the data to be printed are arranged in the order of pages in a file, a printer cannot print until after the entire data is received in case of a PDF file as the data to be printed can be arranged irrespective of the order of pages in the file. Consequently, such a printer sometimes ends up being unable to print a PDF file as it cannot receive the entire file due to the limitation of its memory capacity (usable capacity or vacant capacity).
In connection with this problem, devices that are capable of reconstituting the contents of a PDF file in order to display the data in the order of receipt without having to receive the entire PDF file have been proposed (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,553).
However, in case of the device disclosed in the abovementioned issued patent, it still requires a complicated process for reconstituting a PDF file on the transmission side, such as a PC, prior to the file transfer. Therefore, the technology in the above device has a problem that it does not reduce the load on the PC compared to converting PDF files into print data described in PDL such as PS.
Moreover, the abovementioned technology is basically a technology of displaying on display units so that it does not take much consideration in printing on printers. More specifically, in case there is a need of printing a file in the order different from the order of pages in the file, such as in a case when a special printing condition, for example, face up, is applied, where printing is executed from the last page to the top page sequentially, the abovementioned technology cannot be used, thus making it difficult to be applied to the PDF direct printing.
Further, because PDF files are widely distributed, it is preferable to be able to exchange them over the network without adding any changes or correction. Another problem with the abovementioned device is that a revised file becomes completely different from the original PDF file. Moreover, some of the PDF files are constituted in such a way that does not allow any changes from the security standpoint, thus making them impossible to be reconstituted at all.